Ad in the book

Well it's that time again to setup advertising for next years "book" I've got a few things at play and just wondered what everybody else thinks.

First of all, most of our work comes by word of mouth because of the good name we have earned since '87. We also have the first listing for roofers, and the largest. The largest is because they threw us a good deal about four years ago, bundling it with an internet package. Now, after thinking about it, I'd prefer not to have the biggest ad because we want people looking for the best work, not the biggest outfit. We want people who have heard of us, and preferably just find our number in the book.

I would drop it down to a small ad to save some overhead BUT they won't let us. If we drop it down, we don't save much and get kicked to the back of the list. :angry:

We use to have about a dozen guys but over the last four years have let many of them go to focus on installing the best possible roof every time and to be more efficient.

Do you think that consumers would like to see an ad and think it's a large business, or would they rather know that we are a small group of very experienced guys who almost always have the owners highly involved?

It's been a long time, and how much has changed.

 

Yeah, agree.

Well it's that time again to setup advertising for next years "book" I've got a few things at play and just wondered what everybody else thinks.

First of all, most of our work comes by word of mouth because of the good name we have earned since '87. We also have the first listing for roofers, and the largest. The largest is because they threw us a good deal about four years ago, bundling it with an internet package. Now, after thinking about it, I'd prefer not to have the biggest ad because we want people looking for the best work, not the biggest outfit. We want people who have heard of us, and preferably just find our number in the book.

I would drop it down to a small ad to save some overhead BUT they won't let us. If we drop it down, we don't save much and get kicked to the back of the list. :angry:

We use to have about a dozen guys but over the last four years have let many of them go to focus on installing the best possible roof every time and to be more efficient.

Do you think that consumers would like to see an ad and think it's a large business, or would they rather know that we are a small group of very experienced guys who almost always have the owners highly involved?

-clvr83

Too bad it's not relevant anymore https://freebooksummary.com/category/the-grapes-of-wrath

It's been a long time, and how much has changed.

I doubt I've used the yellow pages in 5 years. Probably haven't looked at a phonebook more than 3 times in the same period.

Decisions decisions. Very good point GSD.

We get ol' ladies, young couples with their first house (guys w/ young ol' ladies) and all groups in between. I couldn't put a range on our average customer.

Yellowbook can piss right off. They were charging my Dad an insane amount for a single webpage that had a picture of a house that you could barely see the roof.

I had 4 jobs come in today. :)

Two website.

One referral. ( from a website client )

One Yellow Pages.

My demographics here include all ages and all that call get me from the internet or referrals. No hard copy. The YP is focused on how big an ad can be, so with pages of roofers here, I dropped out. Then, they listed me anyway! And wanted money. I told them to unlist me and that's when i found they are required to list businesses. They wanted more for me to be unlisted! I refused to pay for that, so now I've had an unwanted listing for about 18 years now.

Referrals and internet are the way to go. :)

With a good sized ad in the original Yellow Pages, I could draw a lot of calls for repair but what good is that if I have to give all the money over to them?

Yellow Book gave me a very good deal for a half page ad in two seperate counties/books so I went with that.

Now Yellow Pages is calling and I don't think I can afford to re-up with them this time. I'm gonna tell them I need a bigger ad but can pay NO more.

They will probably just laugh at me and me at them and that will be the end.

I tried a couple different books. Yellowbook, Yellow pages for a few years. Didn't get the response I'd hoped for and the type of lead wasn't that great. They seemed to want to go with the cheapest bid. I opted out. Do my website, Distinctiveroofingaz.com and work my referrals and repeat clients. Keeps 30 of us busy.

Another thing I learned, alot of people keep the same book around for a few years. they have notes, marks, numbers in the books that they don't want to lose. so they hold on to them for a couple years. I would always ask where they got our number from, and they would say the phone book, even though we weren't in it for a couple years.

I'm thinking there is another element in this decision. The age of your target audience. I am sure after all these years you have come up with some demographics of the age of your customers (re-roofing audience). So I am 55 and I don't use the phone book anymore. How old is your target audience. I miss them when I need a booster seat for a kid though.

We were in the biggest city in the state and thus the rates to be in the book were the highest.

Those were the numbers at the end when it became too high to be worthwhile anymore.

Good input guys, thanks.

Wow, Willy, you had to be knocking them roofs out to justify such an expense! But then again, your near a city whereas my biggest town is 26,000.

This is a good topic.

The yellow pages will let you into the book cheap and then hike the prices up every year until your paying a ridiculous amount.

I started with them in 1997 paying $75 per month for a small ad. Within a few years I was paying a couple thousand per month for a large ad.

I've heard a lot of smart business men say that you need at least 5 good sources of leads for a service business to do really well.

When your business is new you lack the referring customer base and repeat clients that are of course the highest quality leads but after being in business for many years you have developed this.

So according to the guru's we need 4 more sources besides our customer base. The yellow pages can be one of them or you can choose 4 others. It's a personal decision that only you can make.

I also could not get them to give me a reasonable deal. It was just up up up with the prices. Eventually, after being in "the book" for over 10 years I dropped out of it. I continued to get business but not very much new business. That is until I added several other types of lead generation.

I stayed out of the book for 2 years. When i dropped it, I was paying $2,500 per month. They let me back in for $409 but that's for a smaller ad than I had before.

That was the real yellow pages. Here there is also a secondary book called yellow book. 5 years ago I was paying them $1,500 per month. After dropping them for 2 years also, now I'm paying $350 per month for the "exact" same size ad but it is a discounted rate.

People are starting to use the internet more and more to find someone to do business with. My number 1 lead source today is my website and they know this.

They try to counter it by offering their online stuff. Which for me has done nothing but cost me money. It's been pretty much worthless.

You can still get new customers from the books if that's what you want but the number of people using them is dropping every year.

Maybe the home owners have figured out that this is where all the hacks are advertising?

But then, I'm a tiny company and don't need to high cash flow to keep going. and as for your question, I'd rather get the people that like the feeling of working with a small company instead of a large one.